Organization Name

Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher

Description:

Our organization is a composite of several open source/free software projects: hugin, panotools and enblend/enfuse. We are used to collaborating across timezones and cultures. We are purely meritocratic with no hierarchies, grant write access on our central repository very liberally, make decisions by consensus, are respectful of diversity and welcome all contributors.

Home page

Main Organization License

GNU General Public License (GPL)

Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2011? What do you hope to gain by participating?

We have had excellent experiences in the past four years we were part of GSOC. As a team, we hope to gain new members. As Free software, we hope to gain a few new mind-blowing features. As a project, we hope to gain visibility to attract more contributors and users beyond GSoC.

If accepted, would this be your first year participating in GSoC?

No

Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation.

Hugin participated in all GSoC since 2007. We consider this participation successful for both organization and students. Hugin improved greatly through the student projects from the last years. Successful projects were, just to name a few;

the Hugin Batch Processor (implemented in GSoC 2008), which made successive batch stitching of large projects possible

Masking in GUI, which enables the user to mask out parts of the panorama prior to stitching

Layout Model, enabling hugin to detect the layout of the panorama input images

OpenGL Preview, which is now generally used as the standard preview for panoramas in hugin

If your organization participated in past GSoCs, please let us know the ratio of students passing to students allocated, e.g. 2006: 3/6 for 3 out of 6 students passed in 2006.

What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible

Knowledge of the wider universe of code applied to produce stitched panoramas and other computational graphics.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?

The very first thing we'll do is make sure that we pick the right students. Our estimations are going to be based on the following criteria:

Students should be avid photographers;

Students should be able to prove that their programming skills match our request by successfully completing a vetting exercise that will test key skills and knowledge relevant to the proposed project;

Students should be able to prove that they can communicate and work well with a mentor and with the community at large.

We are going to do our best to have them understand that GSoC is both (close to) a full time job and fun, so that they treat it with responsibility, but do not consider it a total bore.

Next step is motivation.

The point of participating at GSoC for us is getting new contributors who bring innovation and stick to affiliated projects.

In case a student cannot deliver good enough results, we are not going to drop all the work he managed to do; we will keep development at the highest possible pace, to make sure the community around the affiliated project will not suffer in any way, and any amount of money invested in the project by Google isn't completely lost.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?

The selected mentors are well known and connected in the community. We estimate the risk of a disappearing mentor to be very low. To minimize the impact of such an unlikely event we strive to have several backup mentors who can replace each other. We will assign two mentors (primary and secondary) to each project. In the unlikely event that one of the two mentors disappears, recruiting efforts for a backup mentor will start immediately. Our community has enough depth to provide the necessary resources. It has already experienced the disappearing of key figures on important projects, and survived the test when Helmut Dersch, founding father of the panotools library that is at the core of our community, disappeared.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program?

First of all, we hope to recruit a student from the community, since Hugin's community is growing and vibrant. We will make sure that the student has the appropriate gear to shoot panoramas, and we will do all we can to share our passion for panoramas with them.

If you are a small or new organization applying to GSoC, please list a larger, established GSoC organization or a Googler that can vouch for you here.

Not necessary, since we have a track record with GSOC.

If you are a large organization who is vouching for a small organization applying to GSoC for their first time this year, please list their name and why you think they'd be good candidates for GSoC here:

Are we "large" and do we support a small organization?

Anything else you'd like to tell us?

How great it was for us in the last years?

Backup Admin (Link ID):

Bruno Postle, (brunopostle) will act as a backup admin

The info below doesn't seem to be asked in the Form for GSOC2011. I (Habi) am leaving this for historic reasons below the line.

Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information.

Jim Watters

Jim is willing to be a mentor for projects that are more on the panotools side.

He is a Software Engineer at JFL Peripheral Solution, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, where he designs software for scanners. An avid user of PanoTools since 2000. A growing contributer to the source code of PanoTools since Aug 2003 and a current maintainer of PanoTools. Before receiving his degree in Computer Software in 1999, he received a diploma of Fine Art in Photography in 1990.

Most recently his attention has been directed to creating Immersive Panoramic Video.

His google associated account is jwatters at photocreations.ca.

Mentor 2

Bio

Steering Committee

Do we have a steering committee in 2011? no. We have not had any (did not need it) since 2008. A steering committee is part of a formal project organization and we established one in 2007 when we were new and unknown, to show how serious we are. Now that we are a known factor with a positive track record, a steering committee is no longer necessary. The mentors are self-governing.

What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?

In the past we had industry players sponsor gear for the students to motivate them to stick around after GSoC. Last year we did not have that, and yet the students are still here. All of them integrated their development branches into our integration branch, and contributed after GSoC, albeit at a reduced pace (spare time vs. full time).